Park Bench

I am a composer and that book gives me so many good ideas to write my song.

Fabulous journey with this silent graphic novel

Love this book. Only pictures but tells a great story. This author has an amazing imagination

Sensitive and beautiful story is worth every penny.

It's a simple enough premise: a bench sits beneath a tree in a public park, silent and solitary as the days, seasons, years go by. Occasionally someone stops to rest on its wooden planks and steel framework: a homeless man, a down-on-his-luck busker, a gaggle of elderly ladies, a graffiti artist, a park maintenance worker, a cancer patient, a woman trying to read her copy of Barbara Cartland in peace...Seldom do their lives intersect, but when they do, it can have a life-changing effect. Only the reader is privy to each of the stories that come and go, and the way they intertwine with each other to produce friendships, romance, revelations or fresh outlooks on life. At times it can be funny, poignant, tragic or thought-provoking, and – as with all the best stories – it eventually comes full-circle.Perhaps what's most remarkable is that throughout its three hundred and twenty-seven pages, not a single line of dialogue is spoken. The story is captured entirely through the simple black and white panels, so it's up to the reader to pay close attention to the visual clues scattered throughout the illustrations, especially when it comes to the recurring characters and their storylines.Ultimately the park bench becomes a symbol of the passage of time: from a child using it to manage his first steps, to an elderly couple sharing treats with each other, to a stray dog that marks his territory each time it goes by.You could probably whizz through this in less than fifteen minutes, but it pays to go slowly and savour its atmosphere and cleverness – and afterwards, you'll definitely want to flip back to the beginning and notice everything you may have missed the first time around!

..and no words. But a picture says a thousand words, right?This silent, eloquent book stares intently at one spot, a bench, for days, or seasons, or years. The bench itself isn't the thing to watch, though, any more than a television is. The TV itself isn't of interest - what you care about is the imagery it frames, and that's what this story narrates. It's about all the moments in all the lives that happen on this bench, or near it, or intersect at it. Children, lovers, elders (often lovers as well), leg-lifting dogs, homeless, and a gazillion more moments: this bench frames each of those pictures, gives it a place to exist, and does little else.But the bench is more than a frame to these pictures. It has its own presence when a little boy carves homage to his little girlfriend, it has the scent of that dog (among other things), it's a place for things to be left and found, connecting people across time as well as space. And it has a lifetime (if not literal life) of its own, and lifetimes end.Depending on who you ask, though, lives can be reborn. Like transplant surgeons, artisans give its parts to other lives, or add parts from elsewhere to keep it alive. At least one other author has described the life cycle of an inanimate object - as well, perhaps, but not with such depth and empathy.If "comics" still mean BamPow or 'Archie' to you, you've been away far too long, or just not looking. Masereel, Ward, and many others through the last century, if not longer, have worked to make sequential art a literary form. I can't say it's fully accepted yet - but Dylan's songwriting earned a Nobel award for literature, so I see it only a matter of time and generation. This is as literate and literary as any book, words or none, can hope to be.-- wiredweird

'Park Bench' by Christophe Chabouté explores the world around a common object: the park bench. Through a completely wordless graphic novel, we meet many different characters.The book starts with a young boy carving his ardor for a girl in the bench. Then we see the bench, day to day, season to season, year to year. The commuter who passes it every day. The dog that relieves itself on the same leg. The homeless man who sleeps on it at night. And we witness the transformation and journey of these characters in relation to this bench. From an old couple who share a pastry to the city worker who paints over the graffiti.This was an amazing graphic novel. Things play out panel after panel, and there are a variety of characters, and they all have their plot. The art was amazing and I loved how the artist played with the angle of the bench to keep things from being too static. I found a few of the stories very moving. This is a great graphic novel.I received a review copy of this graphic novel from Gallery 13, Pocket Books, and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this graphic novel.